Rudy Provoost, the CEO of Philips Lighting, was here Friday. There’d been a big, goofy photo of him, lightbulb in hand, in Friday’s NYT business section (the photo does not appear to be online, although the story it accompanied is) so I figured the Curious Capitalist ought to have its own version.

How do you know the economy isn’t doing so hot? Your waitress is really hot, for one thing. Also, there’s a decline in the production of boxes meant to hold cereal, toothpaste, or beer. People are planting gardens to cut down on their food bills. Animal shelters are overwhelmed with pets dropped off by folks whose homes are in foreclosure.

This is a sensitive issue. Quite literally. Americans prefer soft—really soft—toilet paper. That kind of toilet paper uses very little recycled paper, and so it has been targeted as wasteful by environmentalists. Trees are being felled unnecessarily for the sake of your precious behind, they charge. Are consumers going to buy greener …

Sometime today, the G20 will be declared to have supplanted the G8 as the “permanent council for international economic cooperation.” Yay, G20! Having international economic confabs that didn’t include Brazil or India or China no longer made any sense. Then again, having a UN Security Council where France and the UK have veto power and …

It’s hard for the lay person to wrap one’s brain around the rise or fall of GDP, new residential sales, money supply, and other traditional economic indicators. What do those numbers really mean? Well, here are some other indicators that do as advertised, truly indicating in simple terms how people are living, what they’re doing to keep …